f ^ 



BT 






§ 



•He5 THE CROSS 




6^ 


^j. DONALD HANKEY 

AUTHOR OF "a STUDENT IN ARMS," 

"religion and common sense," etc. 




Class. 
Book- 



()op>'rightJ^ 



JO 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE CROSS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 

First Series $i»SO net 

A STUDENT IN ARMS 

Second Series $1.^0 net 

RELIGION AND COMMON SENSE 

60 cents net 

THE BELOVED CAPTAIN: THE 
HONOR OF THE BRIGADE: 
AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 

SO cents net 



E. P. DUTTON &• COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



THE CROSS 



BY 

DONALD HANKEY 

n 
AUTHOR OF "a STUDENT IN ARMS" 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON &- COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



Copyright, 19 19, 
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



• Hzs 



NOV I2J9I9 



Printed In the United States of America 



)CI.A5357()^ 



>>M) { 









DONALD HANKEY 

Born at Brighton^ 1884 

Enlisted August, IQ14 

Kitted in Action October 12, igi6 



THE CROSS 

I 

WITHOUT) His death 
upon the cross the 
teaching of Jesus would never 
have been understood. The 
Cross shattered the disciples' il- 
lusions, and it shatters ours; it 
compels us, as it compelled 
them, to take the teaching of Je- 
sus literally and seriously. It is 
the epitome of His teaching. 
7 



THE CROSS 

Jesus taught by His example 
as well as by His words that the 
values men put on things are 
false. 

Men did and do respect 
position, outward respectability. 
Jesus did not. He only respect- 
ed honesty and sincerity. The 
frank sinner was more hopeful 
in the eyes of Jesus than the os- 
tentatiously pious Pharisee. By 
dying the most ignominious 
death possible — the death of the 
slave — He compelled men to see 
that if they were His disciples 
they must not be respecters of 

persons. 

8 



THE CROSS 

Men did and do respect suc- 
cess. The disciples of Jesus be- 
lieved in Him because they 
thought that in the end He was 
going to be a King, and they 
His chief favorites. Men of to- 
day are inclined to adhere to the 
Church when it is a success, 
when it is popular and influen- 
tial and a leader of popular 
movements. Jesus did not val- 
ue worldly success. He taught 
that men ought not to think of 
success but of pleasing God. 
They were to be fearless critics, 
breaking with custom and tradi- 
tion, opposing popular move- 
9 



THE CROSS 

merits, if they thought them 
wrong. 

By dying on the Cross Jesus 
achieved the nadir of worldly 
failure. He compelled men to 
see that if they were to be His 
disciples they must not flinch 
from it, but be prepared to ac- 
cept it in demonstration of their 
faith that God is more impor- 
tant than men, His pleasure 
more important than public 
opinion. 

Jesus taught that he who 
would be great in the Kingdom 
of God must be the servant of 

lO 



THE CROSS 

all. In dying on the Cross He 
showed that there was no limit 
to service; it must be without 
rieservation. He gave His life 
that men might see the truth. 
His followers must be ready to 
give their lives for the same 
cause. 

Jesus taught that all the mis- 
ery and injustice and cruelty of 
life were in the hands of God, 
and in those hands would work 
together for good. By dying on 
the Cross He showed the reality 
of His faith. It was no pious 

hope, no vague optimism ; it was 
II 



THE CROSS 

the fundamental principle of 
His teaching which He put to 
the proof by His death. 

Jesus taught the love of God; 
but when a man is very loving 
and very forgiving and tender, 
there is always a danger that he 
may be lacking in strength of 
character. There are many ami- 
able people who go about with 
a cheerful smile doing good, 
whom one would not trust to be 
heroic. By His death on the 
Cross Jesus showed that He was 
not weakly sentimental, but that 
in His case love was combined 
with inflexible determination 

12 



THE CROSS 

and courage, and a power to 
face the sternest facts of life. 

His disciples, too, must be- 
ware of being soft and senti- 
mental. They must also be 
strong and fearless, or they are 
none of His. 

Thus the Cross of Jesus sums 
up His contempt of men's val- 
ues. His humility. His faith in 
God and contempt of worldly 
success, His limitless love, His 
faith in the ultimate triumph of 
goodness, His strength and 
courage. 

The Cross of Jesus teaches 
His disciples to despise worldly 
13 



THE CROSS 

honours and success, and to 
look only for honesty, sincerity, 
and faith in God. It teaches 
them that in their service of God 
and man there can be no reser- 
vations; they must give up 
everything when their loyalty to 
God or their love for men de- 
mands it. It teaches them that 
faith in God must be real if it is 
not to be valueless, and that faith 
involves perfect fearlessness, 
and unflinching facing of the 
sternest facts of life. 

Thanks to the Cross Christi- 
anity can never rest at being a 



THE CROSS 

popular movement, a shallow 
optimism. Thanks to the Cross 
we are compelled to face all the 
facts that make belief in a good 
God difficult. Thanks to the 
Cross we have evidence that 
Christ was not blind to the diffi- 
culty of His teaching, but ac- 
cepted it and showed unmistak- 
ably that it did not affect His 
faith in it. 

The Cross is the supreme tri- 
umph of an optimism which ac- 
cepts all the facts which are the 
foundations of pessimism. It is 
justified in the Resurrection. 
15 



THE CROSS 

JI 

THE Cross is more than the 
epitome of a prophet's 
teaching, because Jesus was 
more than a prophet. It is the 
salvation of the world, because 
Jesus was the Son of God. 

When Jesus died upon the 

Cross, He passed from things 

temporal into things eternal, 

from mortality into immortality. 

Jesus was the perfect man. His 

manhood was taken up from the 

abyss of human contempt into 

the highest glory of God. 
i6 



THE CROSS 

Jesus lives. We know it, be- 
cause when we try to obey Him, 
and to pray to Him honestly, we 
feel His presence. The fact that 
Jesus lives in God, and in eter- 
nity, means that man can live in 
God and in eternity if he is at 
one with God. That is to say, 
that the Cross of Jesus shows 
that in spite of the extremity of 
worldly failure a man may hope 
for eternal life with God if only 
he can be at one with Him. 

But man cannot be at one 
with God. His will, which is 
himself, is not at one with God's 
17 



THE CROSS 

will, and never can be. The im- 
perfect will cannot make itself 
perfect. 

Salvation is being at one with 
God. If the Cross can do what 
we cannot, and make us one 
with God in will, the Cross has 
saved us. 

First of all the Cross makes us 
realize that we are not at one 
with God. It makes us realize 
that the world which could 
crucify Jesus was utterly at dis- 
cord with God. And when we 

compare our world with that, we 
i8 



THE CROSS 

know that the discord still pre- 
vails. 

The Cross is the age-long wit- 
ness that the world is found 
wanting. It sets a goal ahead, 
and allows no rest or compla- 
cency until that goal is reached. 

But it not only shows the 
imperfection of mankind, it 
shows each individual his own 
imperfection. It presses home 
the fact that the innocent suffer 
for the guilty. Jesus suffered 
because of the wickedness of 
His generation, and not because 
of His own wickedness. So, too, 
19 



THE CROSS 

our wickedness or imperfection 
causes others to suffer. No 
matter how much we repent or 
reform, we can never undo the 
effect of our contribution to the 
wickedness of the world. It is 
not the punishment of them- 
selves that makes men ashamed 
— it often only makes them har- 
dened; it is witnessing the effect 
of their actions on other people 
whom they did not want to hurt. 
This is the first step in the Sal- 
vation of the Cross. It makes us 
loathe sin because it shows us 
that no man sins unto himself. 
It takes away our false idea that 

20 



THE CROSS 

we can undo our own sin by 
reformation, by showing us that 
its effect passes beyond our 
grasp. All the sin that has been 
and is being woven into the his- 
tory of the world cannot be 
eradicated by us. It is contin- 
ually tainting the future, for the 
future is the outcome of the pres- 
ent, and pure water does not flow 
from a tainted source. 

This involves pessimism un- 
less we believe in God. But ac- 
cording to Christianity the In- 
carnation was the infusion of 
divinity into mankind, the in- 
fusion of the incorruptible into 

21 



THE CROSS 

the corruptible. Into the vicious 
circle of history, where good 
and bad are continually repro- 
ducing themselves without hope 
of ever evolving only good, is in- 
troduced a new factor, a creative 
factor, — God. 

Moreover, that new factor Is 
infinity, and compared with in- 
finity the finite equals nothing. 

God alone, the creative prin- 
ciple which Is all-embracing, 
can save the world and bring 
order out of chaos, good out oi 
evil. 

22 



THE CROSS 

In the incarnation God 
entered humanity. In the Cru- 
cifixion that divine humanity 
was taken up with God. Hence- 
forth we are not without hope, 
because He whom we can un- 
derstand and love and trust, be- 
cause He who understands and 
loves and trusts us. Is In God. 

When God entered humanity, 
the sin of mankind, which con- 
tinually causes pain and suffer- 
ing indiscriminately on man- 
kind, the sin of ourselves, which 
is continually poisoning the 
lives of those who are not our- 
23 



THE CROSS 

selves, was taken upon Himself 
by God. The death of Jesus 
upon the Cross was no mere 
solitary event ; it was the symbol 
of the eternal fact which existed 
before and exists for ever after 
the event that we are not in a 
vicious circle, that human his- 
tory is not one endless chain of 
causation where sin is always 
breeding sin, for God is in the 
circle, and in the long-run the 
sin of the world will work itself 
out on His imperishable good- 
ness, and we shall all be clean. 

But this is not all. This is 
24 



THE CROSS 

only an abstract theory, which 
calls for personal verification. 
Can we be sure that the effect of 
our sin ultimately comes to good 
in the goodness of God? Can 
we be sure that sin is gradually 
being wrought into good? 

Before we can be sure, we 
must ourselves plant our feet in 
the way of Salvation. 

God through Christ is in 
humanity. But how? True, 
Jesus was once man, but His 
manhood was driven out of the 
world by the Crucifixion. Was 
25 



THE CROSS 

not the Crucifixion man's rejec- 
tion of God's Salvation? 

"Father, forgive them, they 
know not what they do." They 
knew not what they did, and 
the Father forgave them. The 
Saviour that they spurned and 
drove away from the world came 
back in spite of them to those 
who were willing to receive 
Him. 

Jesus lives in mankind to-day. 

He lives in the wills of His 

disciples. All who are humble, 

who hate their sin, and turn to 
26 



THE CROSS 

Him for help find His spirit 
coming into their lives, trans- 
forming them, giving them 
courage for fear, love for selfish- 
ness, hope for despair. 

The Church is the body of 
Christ. Not the Roman, Greek, 
Anglican, or Free Church, but 
the company of all those in 
whom the Spirit of Jesus dwells. 

These are the salt of the 
earth, these are the light of the 
world, these are the leaven 
which leaveneth the lump. 

This, then, is the gospel of 
27 



THE CROSS 

the Cross. Sin, whatever its 
origin, is transmitted from gen- 
eration to generation. Sin, 
whoever the perpetrator, has an 
effect which is only Hmited by 
mankind. Sin can only be abol- 
ished by a new birth, a change 
of will, which the sinful will 
itself cannot effect. But God 
enters. God suffers. The sight 
of God's suffering brings the 
desire for good and the hatred 
of sin home to man. They turn 
to Him. They ask for the in- 
fusion of life-giving spirit 
which shall destroy the sin in 

their wills. 

28 



THE CROSS 

They are answered. The 
answer is this. They can share 
in the Spirit of God, in the 
good - creating, sin - destroying 
Spirit of God only on one con- 
dition — that they share His 
suffering for the world. 

Salvation comes to the in- 
dividual man. He receives the 
bread, which is the symbol of 
the body of Christ. He becomes 
a member of the mystical body 
in which the God-life of Christ 
is ever active in the world. But 
he also takes the wine, the 

symbol of the blood of Christ, 
29 



THE CROSS 

in token that he accepts the 
burden and the privilege of 
the Cross, the symbol of the 
suffering of God. 

"Bear ye one another's bur- 
dens." "Take up your cross 
daily." "Lose your life that ye 
may find it." The servant of 
Christ is the servant of man, 
bound to bear the burden of 
other people's sins. The world 
is to be saved by Christ, but in 
the persons of His saints. 

Who is saving the world? 
Those women who, in the Spirit 
30 



THE CROSS 

of Christ, go to raise by their 
sympathy and love the wrecks 
of womanhood that have been 
ruined by men. Those who, in 
the Spirit of Jesus, share the 
troubles and sufferings of the 
oppressed who are made to 
suffer by the selfishness of their 
employers. All who in any way 
help to bear a burden that an- 
other has imposed — doctors, 
nurses, clergy, sisters of the 
poor, ordinary men and women 
who in a quiet and unprofes- 
sional way help to undo the 
wrong that others have done. 
These are the body of Christ. 
31 



THE CROSS 

In them He still lives and loves 
and suffers. In them the re- 
demption of the world is being 
accomplished by Man. 

Salvation is for the individual 
and for the race, and it is accom- 
plished by God suffering in 
Christ, and by Christ suffering 
in His Body, the Church. 

The individual man, thinking 
of the Cross of Christ, thinking 
of the innocent suffering for the 
guilty, thinking of the innocent 
whom he has injured, comes to 
hate and loathe the sin, whose 
work he cannot undo. 
32 



THE CROSS 

He feels shut off from God; 
out of tune with the heavenly 
harmony, he despairs. 

Humbly he approaches the 
human Jesus, God's love incar- 
nate. To Him he confesses 
humbly and penitently his sin 
and his impotence. 

He receives forgiveness and a 
part of the burden of the Cross. 

What does this mean? It 
means that through Jesus he 
comes to the Father. In spite of 
his sin he comes into the pres- 
ence of Goodness. He is put in 

33 



THE CROSS 

touch with that higher power 
which can alone instil life into 
his corruption, and restore his 
sickness to wholesomeness. 
This is forgiveness. But this 
involves partaking in the nature 
of God. And God is ever suffer- 
ing for Mankind. The forgiven 
man is told not to be self-satis- 
fied, not to go about prating 
that he is saved. He is given a 
work to do for God — to share 
the love, which means to share 
the suffering which is part of the 
glory of the Eternal. 

So the Church was established 

34 



THE CROSS 

by the blood of the martyrs. 
So now it is not by costly cere- 
monial, by well-trained choirs, 
by eloquent sermons, that the 
salvation of the world is being 
accomplished, but by the 
humble love, the meekness, the 
tenderness, the purity, the un- 
selfishness, the fearlessness of 
the saints in whom the Spirit of 
Christ dwells. Not only in mis- 
sions, in hospitals, and in 
schools is this being done, but 
in every place where there is un- 
selfishness, purity, and fearless 
rectitude. In poor homes the 
Christian mother or father, son 

35 



THE CROSS 

or daughter, by trying to make 
the family happy, are shaming 
those who are inclined to be 
selfish. In barrack-rooms the 
pure and fearless soldier is sham- 
ing in Christ's name those who 
are foul, and those who for fear 
of public opinion are weak. In 
Borough Councils, the fearless 
Christian is shaming those who 
would use their office for their 
own ends. In business the un- 
selfish partner is shaming those 
who would extract gold from the 
blood of their employees. In 
workshops the pure and fearless 
man or boy is shaming the 
36 



THE CROSS 

shirker, the dirty-minded the 
blasphemous. In every walk of 
life the redemption of the world 
is being accomplished by those 
servants of Christ who gladly 
bear His Cross, in whom the 
Spirit of Christ is triumphing 
over heredity and environment, 
and introducing a new life 
which is eternal. 

In some other world the 
process is going on with those 
who have passed from here. 
There, too, the love of God is 
recreating, transforming evil 
into good. 

37 



THE CROSS 

We preach Christ crucified to 
them that are being saved the 
wisdom of God and the power 
of God. 

The sacrifice of the Cross was 
not a transaction which altered 
God's attitude towards man; it 
was the revelation of an eternal 
fact — that God is love, and that 
where there is imperfection love 
means suffering, and that in 
this suffering of God lies 
salvation. It was the revelation 
of this to men, and when taken 
in conjunction with the life of 
Jesus, the sacrament of the Last 
38 



THE CROSS 

Supper, and His risen life, it 
enabled His disciples to count 
on the fact that it revealed, to get 
into conscious touch with that 
which alone could save them, 
and to learn the way of salvation 
for themselves and others, which 
is the way of the Cross. 

The Cross of Christ is what 
gives weight to all His teaching. 
Had Christ simply been one of 
the hundred and one teachers 
who preached more or less elo- 
quently that earth's failure was 
often heaven's success. He 
would have ranked with them as 
great, noble-minded, but remote. 
39 



THE CROSS 

Instead of that, He became the 
source of a spiritual power 
which has no parallel in history. 
The power which enabled a 
handful of Jews to convince the 
whole western world that their 
Rabbi was the Son of God, and 
had risen from the dead, did not 
emanate from the Sermon on the 
Mount, but from the Cross and 
what followed. Jesus not only 
preached that one must seek first 
the things of God because they 
were the only things that mat- 
tered; He also sought them, and 
in doing so defied the powers of 

earth to do their worst. On Cal- 
40 



THE CROSS 

vary there was enacted in its 
most dramatic form the eternal 
struggle between matter and 
spirit, between temporal power, 
worldly ambitions, reliance on 
physical strength on the one 
side, and faith in God, in the 
divine in man, in the eternal life 
of the spirit, in the superlative 
importance of love, honesty, 
truth, courage, purity, and all 
the spiritual virtues, to the ab- 
solute exclusion of physi- 
cal strength, worldly success, 
wealth, popularity, and all the 
sordid things that men make 
false gods of. 

41 



THE CROSS 

It is a good thing to realize 
what an absolutely sordid and 
degrading thing crucifixion was. 
It is difficult to imagine any way 
in which you could more effec- 
tively show your absolute loath- 
ing and contempt for a man than 
by scourging him, and then nail- 
ing up his naked bleeding body, 
barely raised off the ground, to 
be mocked and spat on by His 
enemies, and to be the helpless 
victim of their filthy insults. All 
that Jesus went through. It re- 
minds one of Elijah pouring 
water over his sacrifice, to dem- 
onstrate the power of his God. 
42 



THE CROSS 

If Christ could survive such an 
end, well, He must be something 
more than a charlatan indeed. 

Christ did survive the Cruci- 
fixion. Something that happened 
afterwards convinced His dis- 
ciples so effectually that they 
were able to convince the world 
in which they lived, that Jesus, 
who had defied the powers of the 
material world, and had suffered 
them to do their worst, had won. 
The Galilean had conquered. 
The bit of "crucified carrion" 
became the Master of countless 
generations of men. The victory 
lof the spirit over matter had been 

43 



THE CROSS 

fought, and matter was con- 
quered. 

It is that representative vic- 
tory of Christ that has enabled 
millions of men and women to 
believe in their best selves, to 
conquer temptation, to pursue 
the highest, to risk poverty, 
persecution, suffering, and death 
rather than betray truth, honour, 
and love. It has saved them 
from the abyss. It has brought 
them into living contact with 
God — made them "at one" with 
Him, "atoned" them. 

The Crucifixion and Christ's 
victory exemplify an eternal 

44 



THE CROSS 

law, tHat redemption comes 
through pain, and corruption 
through material success. It is 
by the innocent suffering that the 
sins of the wicked are washed 
out. The more innocent the 
sufferer, the more patient and 
willing, the greater his or her 
redeeming power. It is when a 
man sees the results of his selfish- 
ness in causing misery to people 
whom he never meant to injure 
that he begins to feel shame. It 
is when his children are born 
imbecile or deformed that a man 
regrets his career of drunken- 
ness or the immorality which has 

45 



THE CROSS 

infected him with venereal dis- 
ease. It is when he sees his com- 
rades killed that the sentry be- 
gins to be ashamed of his lack of 
vigilance. It is when he sees 
younger fellows, who have fol- 
lowed his example, losing their 
freshness and cleanness that a 
man begins to regret his vices. 
So, too, it is the ministrations of 
the innocent, their love and care 
and help, that are able to miti- 
gate the evil that is done by the 
selfishness of the wicked. Like 
lambs led to the slaughter, these 
innocent victims "take away the 

sin of the world," they "make 
46 



THE CROSS 

intercession for the transgress- 
ors," they are the "Christs" 
who redeem mankind by bring- 
ing them to repentance and to 
God. 



47 



4 



! 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Dnve 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 559 675 M ! 



